Compression method and apparatus

1. A method to be used with a coincidence scanner including a plurality of detector elements arranged adjacent a scanner area wherein, the scanner detects subatomic particles, the scanner also including a separate N bit counter for each element, each counter incremented for each detected particle, the counter counts together forming an uncompressed data stream including M bit data nibbles, each M bit data nibble, prior to acquisition, having an initial value, the method for compressing the uncompressed data stream and comprising the steps of, after data collection: (a) selecting M bit nibbles from the initial data stream; (b) for each M bit nibble: (i) identifying an acquired nibble value; (ii) comparing the acquired value to the initial value; (iii) where the acquired and initial values are different, (1) storing the acquired-nibble in an intermediate data stream and (2) indicating storage in a bit map; and (iv) where the acquired and initial values are the same, indicating no storage in the bit map.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein each counter has a most significant M bit nibble and the step of selecting the M bit nibbles includes selecting each of the most significant M bit nibbles.

3. The method of claim 1 further including the step of attaching the bit map to the intermediate data stream to generate a compressed data stream.

4. The method of claim 3 also including the steps of generating a leading word which indicates the size of compressed data stream and the size of the intermediate data stream.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein each N bit counter includes a plurality of M bit nibbles, the method further including the steps of repeating steps (a) and (b) for each M bit nibble.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein N is 16 and M is 4.

7. The method of claim 5 further including the step of compressing the bit map using a run length encoding scheme.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein, the step of compressing includes applying the encoding scheme first to the most significant bits of the bit map corresponding to each counter followed by the second most significant bits of the bit map corresponding to each counter and so on through the least significant bits of the bit map corresponding to each counter.

9. The method of claim 1 also including the steps of, prior to identifying, dividing the data stream into stream segments and performing steps (a) and (b) for nibbles in each of the stream segments thereby generating a separate intermediate segment for each initial stream segment.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of selecting includes first consecutively selecting the most significant nibbles of each counter followed by consecutively selecting the second most significant nibbles of each counter and so on through the least significant nibbles of each counter.

11. The method of claim 1 further including the step of compressing the intermediate data set using a run length encoding scheme.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the imaging scanner is a PET scanner including an identifier wherein, when two elements detect subatomic particles within a temporal event window, the identifier identifies two elements as a coincidence pair and generates a coincidence data packet (CDP), the counters including a counter for each coincidence pair and incremented for each CDP corresponding to an associated coincidence pair.

13. An apparatus to be used with an imaging scanner including a plurality of detector elements arranged adjacent a scanner area wherein the scanner detects subatomic particles, the scanner also including a separate N bit counter for each element, each counter incremented for each detected particle, the counter counts together forming an uncompressed data stream including M bit data nibbles, each M bit data nibble, prior to acquisition, having an initial value, the apparatus for compressing the uncompressed data stream and comprising: an electronic processor running a programmable pulse sequencing program which, after data collection: (a) selects M bit nibbles from the initial data stream; (b) for each M bit nibble: (i) identifies an acquired nibble value; (ii) compares the acquired value to the initial value; (iii) where the acquired and initial values are different, (1) stores the acquired nibble in an intermediate data stream and (2) indicates storage in a bit map; and (iv) where the acquired and initial values are the same, indicates no storage in the bit map.

14. The apparatus of claim 13 wherein each counter has a most significant M bit nibble and the processor selects each of the most significant M bit nibbles.

15. The apparatus of claim 13 wherein the processor also attaches the bit map to the intermediate data stream to generate a compressed data stream.

16. The apparatus of claim 13 wherein each N bit counter includes a plurality of M bit nibbles and wherein the processor repeats steps (a) and (b) for each M bit nibble.

17. The apparatus of claim 16 wherein N is 16 and M is 4.

18. The apparatus of claim 13 wherein the processor also compresses the bit map using a run length encoding scheme.

19. The apparatus of claim 18 wherein the processor, during compression, applies the encoding scheme first to the most significant bits of the bit map corresponding to the counters followed by the second most significant bits of the bit map corresponding to the counters and so on through the least significant bits of the bit map corresponding to the counters.

20. The apparatus of claim 13 wherein the processor, prior to identifying, divides the data stream into stream segments and performs steps (a) and (b) for nibbles in each of the stream segments thereby generating a separate intermediate segment for each initial stream segment.

21. The apparatus of claim 20 wherein the processor also, for each segment, generates a header nibble which indicates the size of the initial segment, the number of nibbles in the initial which were not stored in the intermediate segment and the size of the compressed segment and attaches the header nibble to the compressed data segment.

22. The apparatus of claim 13 wherein the processor selects by first consecutively selecting the most significant nibbles of the counters followed by consecutively selecting the second most significant nibbles of the counters and so on through the least significant nibbles of the counters.

23. The apparatus of claim 13 wherein the processor compresses the intermediate data set using a run length encoding scheme.

24. The apparatus of claim 13 wherein the imaging scanner is a PET scanner including an identifier wherein, when two elements detect subatomic particles within a temporal event window, the identifier identifies the two elements as a coincidence pair and generates a coincidence data packet (CDP), the counters including a counter for each coincidence pair and incremented for each CDP corresponding to an associated coincidence pair.